Faces in the Mirror
by DiMick
Summary: Four days after Kate's father turns up at the boarding house, Betty's still brooding. But perhaps she understands Kate's freak-out better than we might expect... Uploaded from Tumblr by request.


For the fourth day in a row, the face in the mirror makes even Betty flinch. The bruise over her eye, less puffy now, is still a deep purple and shows little sign of fading. "I got hit," is her only reply when the other girls ask her what happened. She thinks they must have figured by now out that one morning she came in to work with a bruise and without Kate, and it's been that way ever since. There must have been wild speculation as they figured it out, but she can't find it in herself to care. Betty knows that she has stood in front of this mirror for too long now without moving, just staring at her reflection. Soon enough the others will be coming along the corridor on their way to catch the streetcar and they will pause at her door and see her staring at herself in the mirror. It looks odd, Betty knows, but it takes such effort to move. The journey to the factory passes, as does her shift. The repetition of the assembly line suits her, and Betty thinks she will work double shifts tomorrow. In the showers, Lorna walks by her and nods. "McRae," she says. Nothing else. It suits Betty, this simplicity of speech. She had had little time for Gladys' grandstanding or speeches before, and now she finds the girl to have too many words altogether. The emptiness in Betty's heart has spread to her head, and it leaves no space for Gladys and her principles.

The ninth day, the bruise has turned into a mass of sickly greens and yellows. The face in the mirror stares back at her until Betty closes her eyes and moves away. The shift matron outside the factory door is not Lorna, and shakes her head. "Not today," she says, "Blue's not on today". Instead of returning to the boarding house, Betty finds herself at a bar with a drink in hand. It's the middle of the afternoon and she doesn't know anyone in here. There's a mirror behind the bar, but for once she looks away, down at her drink. The barman is looking at her, wondering what her story is, she's sure. She swills the drink around in the glass and orders another.

On Christmas Eve, a full fortnight after Kate's departure, Betty finds that the bruise has disappeared. The face in the mirror is thinner than the picture of herself in her head, but she is surprised to find it otherwise unchanged. There are people moving in the corridor outside, packing to return to their families for the holidays. One of them – Nora, Betty thinks – leans around the doorframe into Betty's room and sees her stood, leaning on the sink, watching herself in the mirror. "Staring at yourself again? You aren't half queer, Betty McRae". A fit of giggles erupts in the corridor and Betty can hear them whispering. She ignores it, and so too does her reflection. It isn't as if she's never heard that before. The boarding house quiets as the girls leave. Betty eats her dinner in her room and considers going out. There are places for people on their own at Christmas – church services, auxiliary meals, carol concerts, and other less respectable, more interesting, places – but there's also a half drunk bottle of whiskey under her bed, and a glass less than four feet away.

Later, the liquor has done its work and there is a stillness inside Betty's head. The drink, like the mirror, makes it easy not to think at all. That an unthinking emptiness can colonize her head is not, Betty knows, a new phenomenon. Instead, it seems to be a recurring state – one which is displaced only for a while, and then returns. The past six months or so, her head has been filled by the factory and then by Kate.

The first time Betty felt the need to hide in stillness, she was much younger. Her mother had decided that she needed more female friends, more friends in total in fact, and had sent Betty on Guide camp. Betty had stood there, awkward in someone else's ill fitting uniform, and watched as group by group the girls chose their tent mates and pitched camp. On the third day, Betty, alone again, had begun to make her way back to her tent and bedroll. Rounding the corner of the wash-hut, she stopped, and slunk back against the dark wood. In front of her, some fifteen feet into the trees, was the outline of two girls. Their arms wrapped around each other, and their faces pressed together, and nothing Betty had seen until that point had prepared her. Captivated, she stood in the shadows and watched as hands moved lower and lower down the back of the girl closest to her.

"Betty," a voice behind her whispered, "Don't stare. Its rude, you know". As she turned to see who had spoken, the pair of girls broke apart and began to make their way back towards her. She felt a hand take hers, pulling her away, and then they were running, stumbling across the field, laughing and giggling and still holding one onto the other. Finally, they landed behind a felled tree, out of breath and breathing hard. The other girl, she was called Joyce Betty remembered, must have seen the question on her face, for she smiled lightly and spoke.

"Oh, that's just them. They sneak off every camp". Betty let the other girl's hand go, the comfort no longer comforting, and poked at the dirt at her feet.

"But, isn't it unnatural, two girls like that? Don't you think it's disgusting?" Joyce looked at her then, and snorted, exhaled through her nose in a way that sounded like laughter, and judgement, and affection all at once. "Betts," she said, and might have said more, but the camp whistle sounded in the distance and the girls were up again, running, no longer holding hands.

Dark came quickly, and soon the girls were in their tents, wrapped against the night air's chill. The snores and heavy breathing told her that everyone else was asleep, but Betty lay there, the girl Joyce by her side, wide awake. Without warning, Joyce rolled above her, brushing hair from Betty's forehead. In the dark, Betty could feel her smile as the girl leaned down slowly towards her, and pressed her lips to the mole on Betty's cheek. Then they were kissing, lips and teeth and tongues, and Joyce's hand was inside Betty's shirt, and Betty was holding her close, crushing her against her chest, and nothing about it felt unnatural or wrong. The next morning, Betty woke with the Joyce's head on her shoulder, and her arm across her stomach. For long, agonizing moments she did, dare not, move. Then suddenly she was up, not caring if Joyce woke or not. In the half dark she crossed to the wash station, and fumbled for the light. Splashing water on her face, Betty stared into the mirror at herself – at her hair, standing straight up on one side and a ratted mess on the other, at her lips, at her hands – and felt a horrified panic begin to form somewhere deep in her stomach.

"Sleep well, did we?" Someone else, another girl from the tent, was stood at the wash station too, removing the pins from her hair. Betty jumped and her eyes slid from her reflection to the other girl's face, waiting to see the accusation written there, but saw nothing. A narrow escape, then. The rest of the week, she did not look at Joyce, and made sure at night to move to the other end of the tent. When she was still, not talking or working, at night, Betty found the scene replaying again and again behind her eyes, and so she worked on stilling her mind, on not thinking, on not seeing. Betty returned from camp with no more friends than when she went. In the weeks that followed, her mother noticed the amount of time Betty spent at the mirror, staring silently and unmoving at her own reflection. Occasionally, as time passed, the need to empty her head would be stronger. Betty would turn to the mirror, or the drink, and allow herself to think nothing.

Christmas day, and Betty woke with nothing in her head but a headache. The face in the mirror looked, on the surface, no different to the day before, but somehow Betty thought the expression had changed. She tried to flatten it, close it down, but the memory of Joyce, of the girls kissing in the backwoods, has cracked the emptiness and she can't regain it, however hard she tries. The bottle from the night before is empty. Its Christmas, and everything is shut. The stillness, so easy to achieve before, is slipping away.

Betty thinks, for a moment, that she should write to Joyce, explain. But she quickly scoffs at her own idea – what would she write? Dear Joyce, Sorry I groped you then never spoke to you again, Merry Christmas, Betty. Somehow, that hardly strikes her as a good idea, even if she knew where Joyce lived anymore. She doesn't know where Kate lives, either. No letters of apologies today. Over lunch, Betty thinks of Kate, of the way she said she sang to feel something, and wonders whether, perhaps, Kate had built her own brand of stillness. The barriers Kate fields against the world are easy to see, but Betty has never before compared them to the calm inside her own head. Perhaps, Betty thinks, she was Kate's Joyce. Perhaps everyone needs that first frightening kiss. She just hopes that Kate overcomes the habit of stillness sooner than she did.

The eighteenth day, the face in the mirror does not hold her long. She is on the streetcar, and at the factory gates, before many others are even stirring. The day is bright, but cold, and Betty can see her breath in the air.

"You look," Gladys pauses, searching for the right way to put it, uncertain of the reception she'll receive, "better".

"Yes," Betty replies, "Thank Joyce". Ignoring Gladys' questioning look, Betty links their arms and together, Gladys chattering away, they head into the noise of the factory and out of the silence.


End file.
